January 21, 2021
...AND CHEAPER...:
What Cheaper Solar Power Means for Low-Income Families: Thanks to these price and growth trends, an increasing number of state and local governments, utilities and businesses want to help lower-income customers go solar. They believe solar will cut energy bills, reduce money spent on bill payment programs, avoid pollution and create green jobs ( Galen Barbose Eric O'Shaughnessy Ryan Wiser, 1/21/21, National Interest)
In our study we evaluated five policies and business models to see which ones helped low- and moderate-income households go solar:Financial incentives targeted at low- and moderate-income households, usually rebates or other incentives to reduce upfront costs.Leasing rooftop solar systems, which reduces upfront costs.Property Assessed Clean Energy financing, or PACE, which allows customers to finance energy improvements through their property tax payments. Currently, residential PACE is available only in California, Florida and Missouri.Financial incentives such as rebates offered to customers of any income level."Solarize" campaigns, in which customers band together in a group purchase to get a good price.The study includes data on more than 1 million residential rooftop photovoltaic systems installed on single-family homes in 18 states from 2010 to 2018. We compared modeled household-level income estimates for solar adopters with area median household incomes from U.S. Census data.We found that three of the interventions - targeted incentives, leasing and PACE - effectively increased adoption equity. These approaches are boosting sales to low-income customers in existing markets and helping solar companies move into new markets, such as low-income areas where solar sales have been weak or absent.
Posted by Orrin Judd at January 21, 2021 11:27 AM